EMO Preview: Liebherr

Stand A11, Hall 26. Liebherr-Verzahntechnik will be showcasing three new machines at the upcoming EMO show. These are solutions for the automotive and commercial vehicle industry in particular: two hobbing machines, one with separate Chamfer Cut unit for workpieces up to 180 mm and one with two horizontally arranged workpiece spindles with separate press deburring unit. Also the company will present a newly designed gear grinding machine for both profile and generating grinding.

“Given their extensive technological capabilities, the new machines are designed towards meeting current and future industry requirements,” said Dr.-Ing. Hansjörg Geiser, manager development and design gear cutting machines. “It was our goal to provide the perfect solution for each particular application. The result is key: process reliability and the quality of manufactured components – delivered as cost-effectively as possible.”Hobbing Machine Integrates Chamfer Quality with One-Cut MachiningLiebherr-Verzahntechnik’s new gear hobbing machine with integrated Chamfer Cut unit for deburring and chamfering the face edges is based on renowned technology. After hobbing with the usual one-cut strategy, the Chamfer Cut tool additionally generates precise and reproducible chamfers that are increasingly demanded by the market. The newly developed solution eliminates the former main disadvantage of Chamfer Cut, namely that the chamfering process prolongs machining time. In the past,hobbing and chamfering took too much time at the same setting. “We have solved this by integrating a complete second machining unit for Chamfer Cut tools – two machines in one so to speak,” said Dr.-Ing. Oliver Winkel, director of application technology and responsible for technological development of gear cutting at Liebherr-Verzahntechnik. Geiser added: “The main design engineering challenge was to execute the chamfer-cut unit at a reasonable cost.” We thus integrate the deburring unit within the existing machine dimensions without any impact on space requirements.

Functionality, operation, and CNC programming are based on familiar machine design. The operating changeover from the existing machine is thus relatively simple, once standard user training has been provided. Chamfering no longer prolongs machining time by having it take place in a separate unit within the same machine, whilst the next workpiece is already hobbed. Both chamfer tools are no longer located directly next to the hobbing tool, but in the separate unit. “We know from gearbox design development that the subject of ‘chamfering’ is becoming more and more important. This innovation enables the machine to combine an already undisputed high chamfering quality, provided by the proven Chamfer Cut procedure, with cycle times that corespond to the demands of the automotive industry,” said Winkel. Look for additional EMO Hannover coverage in the August issue of Gear Technology.